1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to food products. More particularly, the present invention relates to dry culinary mixes for the provision of baked goods, namely cakes, to finished cakes prepared from such mixes and to methods of preparing such finished cakes.
2. The Prior Art
The use of prepared mixes has received wide usage, particularly in home baking. These dry mixes provide convenience by eliminating the steps of ingredient selection, measurement and blending. To prepare cake batters from these dry mixes for baking, liquid materials such as water or milk, liquid shortening, eggs, etc. are added and the combination is then mixed to form a homogeneous mixture or batter and beaten to incorporate air. The resulting aerated batter is then typically transferred to a greased pan or tray and then baked to obtain finished cakes.
While these dry culinary mixes are convenient, it is apparent from the above description that the typical cake preparation procedure still contains several steps. It would be desirable then to eliminate one or more of these steps to provide products of even greater convenience. To this end, certain products have been marketed from time to time which attempt to provide greater convenience to the user. For example, one such product comprises previously hydrated batter. While somewhat more convenient, such products suffer from several disadvantages by virtue of the presence of water, e.g., limited shelf life, special storage requirements such as refrigeration, etc. These disadvantages have prevented these products from obtaining widespread acceptance. Accordingly, most art efforts then have been directed toward providing dry mixes for cakes and to improving both the use or characteristics of the dry mix or of the finished cake prepared therefrom. Dry mixes for cakes may be divided into two groups, namely, shortening-type mixes, e.g., layer cakes and non-shortening-type mixes, e.g. angel food cakes. While applicable to both types, the present invention has particular usefulness for shortening-type cake mixes. Shortening-type cake mixes contain, as major ingredients, flour, sugar, and shortening. To these major constituents other ingredients such as emulsifier, (generally incorporated into the shortening) starches, flavors, leavening, egg solids, non-fat milk solids may be added.
Greater convenience in using dry mixes can be provided by "full formulation" cake mixes. Full formulation mixes are distinguished from partial formulation mixes in that only water need be added for mixing and beating to form an aerated batter. Such full formulation mixes are commercially available and enjoy widespread acceptance particularly in the food service or commercial food industry.
Full formulation cake mixes, while convenient as regards time of mixing, nevertheless require the addition of prescribed quantities of water, blending at low speed to form a batter aeration and transfer to a coated baking container. Even greater convenience for the at-home preparation of layer cakes are provided by the "stir-in-the-pan" layer cake dry mixes. Typically, these are full formulation cake mixes which are specially formulated to be rapidly rehydratable and to be hand mixable. (See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,694,229, issued Sept. 26, 1972 to N. Norbsy et al.) Certain cake mixes of this type contain agglomerated all-purpose wheat flour as a component to aid in the rapid hydration of the cake mix. (See, for example, U.S. Pat. No 3,708,309, issued Jan. 2, 1973 to G. E. Johnson et al.) each of which are incorporated herein by reference. However, even these mixes must still be hand stirred to form a batter. Moreover, these cake mixes are typically marketed in combination with specially coated containers so that batters can be prepared in the baking pan and thereafter baked without the cake sticking to the pan.
Co-pending application (now, U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,824, issued May 7, 1985 by J. R. Blake, R. K. Knutson and G. J. VanHulle) entitled "No-Stir Dry Mixes for Layer Cakes," and which is incorporated herein by reference, provides an improvement in full formulation culinary mixes. The improvement resides in providing full formulation cake mixes in a particular physical form, i.e., granules, which allow for the preparation of finished baked cakes without requiring the conventional steps of mixing to form a batter, aerating the batter, greasing or coating the baking container or transferring the aerated batter to the coated baking container.
Co-pending application Ser. No. 427,106, filed Sept. 29, 1982, by J. R. Blake, R. K. Knutson, and G. J. VanHulle, entitled "No Stir Dry Mixes with Pudding Granules for Layer Cakes with Discontinuous Pudding Phase", provides still a further improvement to the novel layer cake granules in full formulation culinary mixes. The invention disclosed therein provides dry mixes for layer cakes in the form of granules additionally comprising a pudding component. It is disclosed therein that dry pudding compositions can also be prepared in the novel particular physical form of granules and that such granules can be combined with granulated layer cakes to be used for the preparation of a novel form of a finished cake. The dry mixes therein allow for a new form of finished cakes having a discontinuous and distinct phase of pudding in the form of small discrete pudding regions, e.g., 2-5 mm. Such dry mixes of the present invention additionally provide the convenience advantages of no mixing, aeration, etc.
Dry mixes for layer cakes are known which are characterized as containing pudding. Generally these mixes contain conventional layer cake formulations in terms of ingredients and their concentrations. These mixes additionally contain those ingredients which typically comprise instant pudding dry mixes, namely, sugar(s), flavorings and pregelatinized starch. As a rule, these extra ingredients, or extra levels of ingredients (e.g., sugar) are, however, typically uniformly blended with the other layer cake ingredients. Together, the mix ingredients are formed into a homogeneous batter with added liquids in conventional manner, aerated, baked, etc. to form finished layer cakes. These cakes are characterized, thus by having a homogeneous structure. The extra pudding ingredients modify the finished cake to provide enhanced moistness and a heavier character similar to that of pound cakes rather than the lighter, drier, more crumbly character of traditional layer cakes. In contrast, the novel finished cakes of Blake et al. contain discrete, distinct, or discontinuous regions of pudding more analogous to cream-filled cake desserts.
Of course, agglomeration is an old technique in the food art and a variety of food products are available in agglomerated form. Additionally, the food art is replete with agglomeration techniques. (See, for example, "Agglomeration Processes in Food Manufacture," by Niholas Pintauro Noyes Data Corporation, 1972.) Generally, food products are agglomerated to improve one or more of several product attributes. First, food products have been agglomerated to improve aesthetics. For example, soluble coffee powders have been agglomerated primarily for product aesthetics. (See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,135,612, issued June 2, 1964 to E. R. Hair). Second, agglomeration has been more commonly used to provide products of improved material handling, e.g., pourability. Exemplary agglomerated products and methods include those described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,073,951, issued Feb. 14, 1978 to R. G. Sargeant. Most commonly, very large numbers of food products have been agglomerated in the past to enhance their solubility or dispersion characteristics in liquids. These products include flour, non-fat dry milk solids, cocoa, sugars, eggs, etc.
Exemplary products and methods of preparation are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,156,020, issued May 5, 1979 to Bohrmann et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,021,582, issued May 3, 1977 to J. S. Hsu; U.S. Pat. No. 4,016,337, issued Apr. 5, 1977 to J. S. Hsu.
While these agglomerated products and methods have been used in the past for the provision of products exhibiting improved aesthetics, material handling and dispersability in liquids, it has been surprisingly discovered that agglomeration can be employed to provide pudding materials useful as ingredients in no-stir cake mixes and to novel forms of finished cakes prepared therefrom. In particular, the present granules for both layer cake and pudding components are much larger in size than those of other food products and thus the present dry mixes are referred to herein as having been "granulated."
Certain problems, however, still remain in the provision of cakes with discontinuous pudding phases. It would be desirable to provide cakes with discrete pudding regions of larger, i.e., greater than 5 mm., and thus more visible, sizes. However, merely increasing the size of the granules leads to certain problems. Larger granules take longer to rehydrate. If baked immediately, as would be more convenient, cakes prepared therefrom have hard spots resulting from incomplete rehydration. Also, the continuous cake region is adversely affected due to excess moisture stemming from the incomplete rehydration of the pudding fraction.
It has been surprisingly discovered that these problems can be overcome and thus the present invention provides a still further improvement in the art. In its product aspect, it has been surprisingly discovered that the pudding fraction can be fabricated into pieces having improved rehydration characteristics. These pieces are referred to herein as "nuggets." The present mixes containing a pudding fraction in the novel physical form of nuggets enable the realization of novel cakes with larger sized discontinuous pudding regions than heretofore possible. It its method aspect, the present invention pertains to methods of preparing such mixes and also to methods of preparing such finished cakes.